Class of 2012: BA's Reid overcame concussions to thrive at a sport he once hated

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a four-part series featuring graduating area high school senior athletes.

By JOHN DOYLE

jdoyle@fosters.com

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine -- The instant the ball cleared the fence, Joe Reid knew the nightmare was over.

A series of concussions had turned Reid's life as a Berwick Academy senior into a horror story. The three-sport athlete had suffered through a subpar soccer season and missed all but one game of basketball. Unable to play his favorite sport, lacrosse, in the spring, Reid joined the baseball team with the hope of salvaging what was left of a once-promising athletic career.

His first attempt at batting practice, however, got off to a slow start.

"I couldn't make contact with the ball at all," Reid said. "It was 10 or 15 swings, and then I connected with one. And I drove it 15 feet over the right-field fence. Since then, I guess I knew how to play baseball."

At that point, Reid knew he was a baseball player.

"I definitely knew I was back," Reid said. "It was over. That's the darkest part of having concussions. There's no timetable. With a broken bone, it'll heal in four to six weeks. You never know when you're going to get better. With that hit, I knew I was back."

At the time, Berwick baseball coach Mike Hannon didn't know what to make of his senior rookie. But even he realized the significance of the moment.

"I remember him struggling," Hannon said. "I knew the feeling. I wanted to stick with it, and he started getting them up in the air. It was nice to see him get a little confidence going forward, and the rest of the team had a good reaction, so that helped him out too."

To say Reid is concussion prone would be an understatement. He sustained his first concussion in second grade when he ran into a brick wall. During his freshman year of lacrosse, he collided with an opponent during a game against Hebron Academy.

"I don't remember that hit, honestly," said Reid, who lives in Dover, N.H. "My dad said it was pretty hard. It didn't knock me out, I just don't really remember it."

During his sophomore year, Reid broke his nose playing basketball "in a few places in one game," he said. "I may have had a concussion then, but it was never diagnosed."

In the summer before his senior year, in his first game at a summer soccer recruiting camp at Brown University in Rhode Island, Reid took another blow to the head with a ball on a shot by an opponent. He went to the hospital and was sent home.

"It was two hours into a week-long camp," Reid said. "That kind of stunk. If there was a moment I realized I couldn't play college soccer, it was definitely right then."

Reid was cleared to play for Berwick in the fall, but said he thinks he was cleared too quickly.

"I couldn't go outside in the light or anything like that," Reid said. "It was a pretty severe concussion. Once soccer started again for Berwick, it was like being a freshman again. I was just awful."

Looking back, Reid said, he realized he was having side effects of that concussion all season long.

"I was always just a step too slow," he said. "Headers affected me just a little bit more than they used to. After sprints I was dizzy and disoriented. But I didn't really think much of it."

The side effects weren't severe, Reid said, just bad enough to be a nuisance, causing him to play at a lower level than he was used to.

"My coach was pretty frustrated with me," Reid said. "He didn't know what the issue was with me. I'd never played that bad in a sport in my life. (It) was tough, especially as a captain, because you're going out there as a leader and you're playing so awful."

Along came basketball season, and more bad luck for Reid. The day after the Bulldogs' season opener, Reid took an elbow to the head at practice, and sustained another concussion.

This was the big one. The injury not only put an immediate end to Reid's senior season of basketball, it rendered him unable to do much more than stay in his room for more than four months.

After about six weeks, Reid and his parents realized that he wasn't getting any better and was still feeling miserable. They went down to Children's Hospital in Boston for an expert opinion.

"We felt we should go somewhere that's the best in the world," Reid said. "The thing about concussions and brain injuries is that the only person who can see everything you're going through is yourself.

"When you have brain damage, it makes it hard to make words come together, and it's hard to describe how it feels," he continued. "It was scary because no one could understand the incessant headaches and complete alienation of what was going on around me."

Reid said the scariest thing was the battle between his mind and his brain.

"I knew what was wrong, but my brain couldn't keep up with my mind," he said. "That was really the worst part."

Reid recovered well enough, however, to do what he needed to do to graduate. With the help of medication to deal with the headaches, Reid focused on attending two classes a day -- history and English.